Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Becoming Mindful for Life with Willem Kuyken, PhD
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 485 of Live Happy Now. Mindfulness is known for preventing depression and improving mental health, but how do you create a practice that really works for you?
I’m your host, Paula Felps, and this week, Willem Kuyken, the Ritblat Professor of Mindfulness and Psychological Science at the University of Oxford in the UK, is here to answer that question.
Willem’s most recent book, Mindfulness for Life, offers three keys to living well through mindfulness and explains how to develop and sustain a mindfulness practice that’s designed just for you. Let’s have a listen.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:41] PF: Willem, thank you for joining me on Live Happy Now.
[0:00:43] WK: Really delighted to be here today, Paula.
[0:00:46] PF: You have a brand-new book out, and we talk about mindfulness on the show, and you have this different approach to it, so I was really excited to talk to you. I wanted to start by having you explain to us what you mean by mindfulness for life?
[0:01:01] WK: Yes. I think a lot of people think about mindfulness as being something that you do on a meditation cushion or on a yoga mat or something like that. I think the kind of basic idea of this book is that mindfulness is something that you can weave into every moment of your day. In a way, it’s not about doing anything differently or necessarily sitting on a meditation mat, but it’s about coming to every moment of our day with a sense of awareness and a sense of kindness and friendliness.
[0:01:26] PF: I love the fact that you have this different mindset for it because different practices appeal to different people. I was really taken by the way that you talk about how the current way mindfulness is being taught really doesn’t align with the reality of how we’re living our lives. So, can you dive into that a little bit and talk as you mentioned, it’s not always on a yoga mat. Can you talk about how our lives aren’t matching up with the way we’re being taught to practice mindfulness?
[0:01:59] WK: I was hiking a little while ago when I was writing this book, and I came to the cemetery where I had my lunch, and I saw this gravestone, which had– a very simple gravestone. Had a woman’s name on it. It had just one very simple inscription, “A life well lived.” I thought that was such a cool gravestone. I was hiking for about four or five days after that, and I spent a lot of time thinking about, what does that mean? What does that look like? What does a life well lived look like?
I think, to answer your question, I came to the conclusion that I think mindfulness can help us to think how do we live our lives in a way that when we come to that gravestone, we can have a life well lived written on it. I think it’s from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep, it’s just having a sense of pausing and checking in and asking ourselves questions like, how am I doing right now? What’s happening in my body right now? What’s happening in my mind right now? Am I living my life in a way that feels like it’s pointing in the right direction? That’s aligned with my values, that’s actually going to improve my well-being, the well-being of the people around me? Maybe if one’s concerned about it, the well-being of the wider world as well as the planet that we live on.
There’s nothing magic about it. It’s about how we interact with our kids, with our partner. It’s about how we are when we commute to work, how we are when we log onto our computer. In all of these moments, there is an opportunity to wake up and really tune in and be mindful, if you like.
[0:03:23] PF: But doing that really requires a shift in how we think because we’re not attuned to checking in with ourselves. We’re attuned to getting all this information thrown at us from the moment that we wake up. We’re getting bombarded with social media and news alerts and things like that. So, how do you build that into your day where you’re kind of automatically learning to take a break and check in?
[0:03:47] WK: I guess I have two hacks to that question. The first is, now what you’re saying is right, of course, people would say, “I’m getting on with my life. It’s busy. Stuffs are being thrown at me.” But if you said to someone, “I’m going to take away from you, all of yourself will about what food and drink you put into your mouth. I’m going to stock your fridge. I’m going to stock your cupboards and I’m going to put only what I want in front of you every moment and that’s what you’re going to eat. That’s what you’re going to drink.” People would say, “No way. No way am I giving over my free will about what I eat and drink.”
Yet that’s what you’re describing, people are doing. I think that hack of just shifting, hang on the minute, am I actually exercising choice about what I let in through my eyes, through my hearing, through every moment of my day? I think that’s the first hack. I think when people think about it like that, they go, “Gosh, actually, scrolling on this particular social media feed is really great. I love it. It keeps me connected with my friends. But this one just stirs me up, and it just gets me so crossed and so angry. Do I really want to be putting that into my mind and into my body?”
The other hack, I think, is really important and interesting is, I think one of the things with mindfulness and analogy that a lot of people perhaps have heard, is it’s a bit like going to the gym. If you want a six pack, if you want to be fit, you want to be strong, you have to go to the gym. So, you have to exercise your mind. Of course, that’s true. There’s some truth to that. But I think the problem with gym membership is that people sign up for the gym and they go two or three times, they never go again, right? That’s what happens with a lot of people with mindfulness.
I think a much better way of thinking about it is who is your best friend and who is your best lifelong friend? What qualities do they have? People will say things like, “Loyalty. They have my back. They’re good fun. I feel better when I spend time with them.” I guess what I would ask your listeners to think about is, is that the way you relate to your own mind and body? When you think about your mind and body, do you think about it as something that you come home to and you think, “This has my back. I enjoy coming home to it. I enjoy the loyalty. I enjoy the laughter. Am I cultivating this relationship in the same way I put energy into my best friend?”
I think we don’t stop and think about actually calling my best friend once in a while, spending time with them, going through the difficult patches. We do that because we value it, because it’s important to us. I think if we can reframe the way we think about mindfulness in that way, what we’re doing is we are looking after a friendship. Think about it, right? From the moment we’re born to the moment we die, this is the body that’s going to carry us through that time. So, investing in it and really putting energy into it, I think is a really good investment. Those two kind of reframes in my experience really help people change their relationship to mindfulness.
[0:06:46] PF: I’m so glad you brought that up because that was my next question. You talk about, that’s number one, is befriending your mind. That can be so difficult to do because our mind is our biggest critic. We don’t embrace our mind like we would a good friend. That’s something I really have tried to adopt in my life, particularly in the last year, where it’s like when I do something that I’m like, “Oh, my God, Paula, why did you even say that?” It’s like, okay, what would you say to your best friend if they had just done the same thing? Can you talk about why it is so difficult to make friends with our mind, but also why it’s so important?
[0:07:25] WK: Paula, thank you for pointing that, because I think you’re so, so right. I think the first thing to say is I think for most people, they’re not even aware. It’s almost like the wallpaper or the paint in your living room. You can’t remember what color it is. You haven’t properly looked at it. I think most the landscape of most people’s minds is like that. They’re not aware of how self-critical or whatever it might be.
So, the first thing is to bring some awareness to it. Then, once we’re aware of it, we might be a bit shocked and go, “Gosh, I wouldn’t be this tough on anybody else, but I can be this tough on myself.” Or, “I wouldn’t be this kind of” – it’s different for everybody, right? That landscape is different for everybody. Why is it important? It is possibly one of the most important things we can do because our mind and our body is what we have to navigate our way through our lives.
I mean, fundamentally, it’s the window through which we see the world. It’s the window through which we make choices. It’s the window through which we work, love, have friendships, and also the difficult stuff, right? So, when we meet challenges and when we have transitions, getting older or whatever, it’s how we navigate and how we manage our way through those transitions. I think it’s absolutely fundamental.
Let me give you an example. There was a young woman with a toddler that I was working with, and she was pushing her toddler on the swing, and the toddler was having an amazing time. It was a woman with a history of depression. She described a moment as she was pushing the toddler, which was supposed to be a really happy moment, right? The toddler was actually really happy. She had this thought of, “Oh, no. I’m a really rubbish mom and I am going to mess up my child and I’m going to pass on my depression to my” – just in that one moment, her mind just started having all of these negative thoughts and they cascaded and she described it like a wrecking ball. It’s like one of those old-fashioned wrecking balls that come in and destroy a building. Such a powerful metaphor. Such a powerful metaphor.
That is an example of how hurt she was taken away from a really happy moment with her toddler to this kind of other place. But what was so powerful about this metaphor which is befriending her mind, which is what you were just describing, is that, ah, what she learned to do is go, “Ah, there’s the wrecking ball.” The beauty with that, of course, is you can step back. When you step back, the wrecking ball just goes, “Woosh”. If you just stand back and watch it, the energy and the power will come out of any time. I think that, I would say, Paula, is the work of mindfulness for life, is becoming better at recognizing those moments. Stepping back from them and taking the fuel and the energy out of them. That, I think, is befriending the mind.
You just have a smile on your face and go, “Oh, that’s a wrecking ball thought. That’s a wrecking ball thought. Right now, what do I want to be doing? I want to be having a good time with my toddler. I want to be doing whatever else we’re doing in our lives.”
[0:10:30] PF: I love that analogy, because one thing that I’ve noticed in my life, I grew up with a very iron fist type of father. So, I’ve noticed, as I try to become more mindful and kind of identify where my thoughts are coming from. I realized that a lot of reactions to myself are exactly what my dad would have said to me or about me. That’s really freeing when you kind of identify. It’s like, “Oh, that’s not actually my mind that’s saying that. That’s just this old tape that’s going to play back and forth as long as I hit play.”
[0:10:58] WK: That’ll be true for so many of your listeners. Certainly, it was true for me too. I went through a similar journey to you. One of the things that’s interesting is it also changed my relationship with myself, but it enabled me to change my relationship with my dad. Because I was then able to say, “Gosh, I wonder what kind of the landscape of his mind was like.” When I think about the upbringing he had, which was a really difficult upbringing, it changed my relationship to him, because I was able to have a lot more compassion for him as well.
[0:11:25] PF: Absolutely.
[0:11:26] WK: That’s kind of the other part of this idea of mindfulness for life, is it’s not like sitting on the mat and all of a sudden everything changes. These aren’t just patterns of thinking and patterns of how we relate to our body that take a long time to recognize and long time to change.
[0:11:43] PF: There’s a genuine gift in recognizing that pattern because, as you said, it changed your relationship with your dad. But I’m sure in addition to changing your relationship with yourself, it probably changed the way you approach your children.
[0:11:55] WK: Absolutely right. Absolutely right. Because you can see that moment in how you are with your kids. I remember when my daughters have both grown up now, but when one of them was a teenager, I remember one morning, it was the usual teenage thing of there was carnage in the kitchen, there were towels all over the floor. Then as she walked out the door, I said, I don’t remember what I said, but she said something quite mean to me, and I just had this rage inside. I just thought to myself, “Okay. She’s a teenager. Her frontal cortex is not yet fully connected to the” –
[0:12:32] PF: That is a scientist responding.
[0:12:34] WK: Exactly. So, I said to her, “I love you. Have a good day.” And of course, she wasn’t thinking about the towels or a carnage in the kitchen. I remember I drove her to soccer practice that evening and we were driving along and out of her tumbled all of these really important things about what was happening at school and in some of her relationships. I thought to myself, if I had reacted in the morning with anger and irritation which is what I wanted to do, probably we couldn’t have that conversation in the car, and I wouldn’t have known about those things that were happening at school.
I think those moments of restraint, and those moments of kindness, when we catch ourselves and recognize that reactivity are moments that we actually can change the trajectory of a relationship and the trajectory of our life, I would say.
[0:13:19] PF: That is probably one of the best reasons to explore mindfulness, because it’s what it can do is so far beyond the time that you invest in it. It has such far-reaching life consequences. As you said, for previous relationships and for relationships going forward. One of the things that I just absolutely love about your approach is that you put values at the core of mindfulness. I wanted to know how you develop that, and how then we identify what values are important to us. Because we all say, “Yes, I’ve got values.” But if you say, “Okay, write them down.” We’re like, “Uh, I’m going to need a minute.”
[0:13:57] WK: The way I think about value is, because I’m a kind of a professor, I’m going to probably sound a little bit kind of like, I got a pointy head when I answer this. But I think values can be deeply personal, but then, there are also probably some shared values that most people would say we have in our culture. Then, there are probably some universal values. The individual values we have, I think there are lots of ways that I talk about in the book that can help you articulate those values.
I mean, for me, the headstone with a life well lived was an invitation to reflect on my values to the rest of that hike. I had four more days of hiking on my own, and I was able to ask myself the question of, “What does a life well lived look like?” Actually, often it’s not rocket science, it’s not difficult. It’s actually quite simple, fundamental things. It’s about the most important people in our lives, and it’s about the way other people see us, and it’s about maybe some things that we enjoy and get a sense of pleasure from. I think those are sort of individual value, and they’ll be different for everyone.
I think transition points can be really helpful here as well. When people think, “Am I going to have kids?” Or, when kids leave home, or when a relationship starts, or a relationship end. These are times that bring our values into close focus. Of course, I had a very good friend who I’d known about 20, 30 years who died just a couple of weeks ago. Her last voice memo to me was on this topic. She sent me this voice memo, and she was a beautiful, warm human being. She chuckled because she couldn’t get the voice memo thing to work, because the tumor had taken her sight away, so she had to use the voice memo. Then, she said to me, “You know, Willem, for me, it’s all about presence, and it’s about presence in my loving relationships. Being present to my friends past and future, loving and being loved, it’s as simple as that.” That’s a kind of exercise in values, right? She’s 10 days away from the end of her life, and she’s reflecting on her values.
I think, Paula, beyond that, this is the pointy headed part of me. I think there probably are some universal values that we probably would all agree are things like, treat other people’s property with respect, or treat other people the way they’d like to be treated. All religions have got a whole set of values. So, for people who are Christian, or Muslim, or whatever, they have those values to abide by.
The way I think about it is, it’s a bit like a compass. That if we use mindfulness, just to come home to our mind and body in any moment, we can ask ourselves, “What is the compass of my values pointing to right now?” With my daughter that morning, I can ask myself, “What’s more important to me having a good relationship with my teenage daughter, so that she knows I’m here for her, or having a clean house, and having five minutes extra that I don’t need to pick up the towels and tidy up the kitchen?” By the way, she’s now a grown woman, and she cleans her own kitchen just fine.
[0:16:59]PF: So, parents can relax. It’s not going to be –
[0:17:02] WK: Yes. I’ve not created a complete slob. In that moment, that was a chance to just pause and check in and say, “What are my values? What’s most important in this moment?” I think it was a good relationship with her and sending her off on a good day, not on the back of an argument with her dad. We can do that. We can all do that. Always check in and ask, “What’s important to me in this moment? What’s important to my wellbeing? What’s important to the wellbeing of people around us? What’s important to the wellbeing of the things that are important to me?”
[0:17:32] PF: That is going to put pause on so many conversations that could turn into arguments. It’s going to really change the way you approach a situation at work, with your partner, with your children. I just see so many amazing benefits of doing that. Obviously, that’s going to change the way that you approach mindfulness, once you’ve identified what your values are.
[0:17:58] WK: Can I add one other thing to that? I agree with everything you’ve said. Then, I would add that there are, of course, people who have a lot of impact on other people. I’m thinking of nurses, I’m thinking of emergency staff, I’m thinking of school teachers, I’m thinking of prison officers. All of these kinds of people, people who run organizations. and run companies with employees, all of these people are shaping a lot of other people’s lives. If they can have that sense of values and a compass, that sense of pausing and checking in as they interact with their staff, as they interact with their students, with prisoners. That gives them a little bit of a space, a little bit of a chance to have that impact on a lot of people’s lives.
I think what’s really important about that is, it can then begin to create a culture. Everybody knows that you walk into one school and you think, “Gosh, this is a place where I would like to be. I’d like my kids to be. It feels safe. Not just physically safe, but emotionally safe.” You walk into another school and you go, “Oh my gosh. I had to be here. This would just stress me out, and I can’t imagine learning anything here.” So, having head teachers and teachers who are mindful, enables them to create cultures safe, enable learning, enable productivity, these kinds of things. I think that’s some of the larger vision for this work as well.
[0:19:24] PF: It can also work in just our day-to-day interactions. Just last week, I was at the grocery store, and it’s toward the end of this woman’s shift, and she is not happy. This store is close to closing, and someone gets in line behind me, and I can just see she’s like, “God, another one.” You can tell, this is someone that’s had a bad day, and I just started talking with her. Instead of being annoyed that she’s rolling her eyes that she has to do her job, it’s like, I just started talking to her a little bit.
By the time we were done with a transaction, she’s in a better mood, and she greeted the next customer, which she did not do when I came into the line. So, it’s like, think about that. It changed her experience, but it also changed that person behind me, who you don’t know what kind of day they were having. and what they were bringing into this situation.
[0:20:13] WK: Can I ask you a question? I know that’s not what we’re supposed to do. How did it change your day?
[0:20:18] PF: It made me feel good that instead of being volatile and reacting, taking that human response of, “Oh, come on.” It made me feel good that I was able to change her state, and that changed my state. Instead of being annoyed with her annoyance, I felt good about our entire interaction.
[0:20:35] WK: One of the things, the science is really interesting in this area. Barbara Fredrickson in the states has done a lot of work on this. Which is that, when we cultivate these attitudes of generosity, of appreciation, basically the whole gamut of positive emotions and mind states, we feel better about ourselves. We feel better able to cope with life. We have a greater sense of resourcefulness. It actually changes our ability to navigate life. So, it’s not some kind of woo-woo, just positive thinking thing. It actually fundamentally opens us up, and opens up our attention, opens up our sense of capacity.
Then you, being generous, it’s not a drain on you. It’s actually a resourcing of you. You walk into the rest of your day and you leave the people behind you and the rest of your day. I think that is what’s so rich about this work. I think employers, if they think about that, this is not a zero-sum game. I mean, if you look after the wellbeing of your staff, you’re going to have a staff group that is more likely to want to come to work, to stay in the job, and to work harder. It’s not a zero-sum game in that sense either, and the same is true in schools, I think.
[0:21:46] PF: That all ties back to our original conversation about befriending your mind, because you are happier with yourself for having responded to that situation in a positive way. Now, you’re not going to be down on yourself for like, “Why wasn’t I nice?” It starts that upward spiral as well.
I know that I have to let you go, but first, I want to talk about the fact that you say, “Leading the life we want means waking up and paying attention.” I love that line. Can you talk about what that means and how we learn to wake up?
[0:22:34] WK: Well, I think you can talk about it in sort of wider level of just waking up, actually being really alive to our lives and to all of the moments of our lives, the people in our lives, the beauty in our life. Or, you can just be a lot more literal and say, “Every day when I wake up, between when I wake up and I’m properly into my day. Is there a moment I can just stop and ask myself, ‘How am I doing right now? It’s the state of my mind and my body. What is it coming up in the day today that feels like I’m looking forward to it, I’m going to have a sense of enjoying that or feeling good about myself. And, can I really lean into those moments? Can I make an intention right now as I’m in the shower or getting out of bed or whatever it is? Can I make an intention right now to really lean into those moments, really savor those moments? And, are there any moments coming up in the day where that’s going to be a tricky conversation, where, that’s going to be a tricky conversation or that’s going to be difficult? Can I really lean into those with a sense of courage, with a sense of openness, with a sense of like, you did with the person in the grocery store who was feeling tired and grumpy? Can I lean into those moments and just see what happens, just be open to what happens?'”
Then, to take that sort of literal point, you can then bookend the other end of the day, between when we’re just closing down, locking up the house, whatever it is, and our eyes closed when we fall asleep. Is there a moment we can just take stock? How am I doing? How’s my mind body now? Probably a bit tired. I’m going to sleep. Can I just take stock and just reflect back on the day? What were the moments where I felt, really, I’m so connected, loved, loving, really good about my work, or about something I was doing. And really lean into those moments, savor them, if you like.
Then, think back to the tricky moments and go, “Gosh, how did I handle that? How was that?” If it didn’t go well then, it ballooned. Because compared to conversation about our dads, “That’s not a chance to beat yourself up before we go to sleep. Okay, that’s interesting. That’s interesting. Something to learn from that. Put that down for now. We’ll come back to that next time.” So, that’s this idea of wake up and paying attention, really leaning into our lives, and leaning into the good stuff with a sense of appreciation, and savoring. And the more challenging stuff, because we all have challenging stuff with a sense of courage, of curiosity, and I think resourcefulness.
[0:24:47] PF: Fantastic. We have so much to learn from your book. I’m going to tell the listeners how they can get their hands on it, how they can learn more about you. But thank you so much for sitting down. This is really a magnificent piece of work that you’ve done, very unique approach to mindfulness, very helpful, and very actionable. It’s so relevant to our lives today. Thank you for writing it, and thank you for sitting down and talking with me about it.
[0:25:11] WK: Thank you for having me on the podcast. I feel really excited about how these ideas are just of the moment, that if people can integrate them into their lives, it could make a real difference for them, but also for the wider world. So. thank you, Paula.
[OUTRO]
[0:25:28] PF: That was Willem Kuyken, talking about how to develop and sustain a mindfulness practice that works for you. If you’d like to learn more about Willem, check out his new book, Mindfulness for Life, or download a free chapter explaining the three keys to mindfulness, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on this podcast episode. We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Live Happy Now, and if you aren’t already receiving us every week, we invite you to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, feel free to drop us a review and let us know what you think. That’s all we have time for today. We’ll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one.
